Somanatha: The Many Voices of a History

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A sober, analytical demonstration of the “various tellings” of the sack of Somnath … [explores] not just the politics of memory, but also how remembrances play on the certitude of facts’—Shahid Amin in Outlook In 1026, Mahmud of Ghazni raided the temple of Somanatha. The history of this raid and subsequent events at the site have been reconstructed in the last couple of centuries largely on the basis of the Turko-Persian sources. There were other sources that also refer to events at Somanatha throughout a period of almost a thousand years, but these have rarely been quoted when reconstructing this history. Until very recent times, there were few attempts to either juxtapose or integrate these other texts in order to arrive at a more complete understanding of the history of Somanatha. Such sources include local Sanskrit inscriptions, biographies of kings and merchants written from a Jaina perspective, epics of Rajput-Turkish relations composed at various Rajput courts and popular narratives of the activities of pirs and gurus, all of which, in some way, have a bearing on the history of Somanatha. This book is an attempt to draw together these numerous voices, to view the sources comparatively, but above all to place each narrative in a historical context. This also involves exploring why a particular, and often distinctive, perspective was adopted by each. It suggests a different history of Somanatha from the one that has been projected through the last two centuries. It also effectively underlines the significance of examining the historical perceptions of how authors present events, both in the narratives written in the past and in the interpretations of past events in present times. ‘A remarkable example of assiduous and open-ended historiography’—Hindustan Times Book Reviews User Reviews

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Romila Thapar was born in India in 1931 and comes from a Punjabi family, spending her early years in various parts of India. She took her first degree from Punjab University and her doctorate from London University. She was appointed to a Readership at Delhi University and subsequently to the Chair in Ancient Indian History at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she is now Emeritus Professor in History. Romila Thapar is also an Honorary Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and has been Visiting Professor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania as well as the Collège de France in Paris. In 1983 she was elected General President of the Indian History Congress and in 1999 a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.